Ghostery is owned by Evidon, a company that collects and provides data to advertising companies. It has a feature called GhostRank that you can check to "support" them. The problem is, Ghostery blocks sites from gathering personal information on you—but Ghostrank will take note the ads you encounter and which ones you block, and sends that information back to advertisers so they can better formulate their ads to avoid being blocked. The data is anonymous, and Ghostery still does everything it promises to do to protect your privacy.

Realize this is a naive question, but I am pretty computer illiterate (too old).
Certain programs obviously spy on me and send information about me to whoever it is that buys that.

if you want to protect your Internet privacy you can use proxy servers which can save your personal data from online snoopers. I've started using proxy from here https://buy.fineproxy.org/eng/individualproxy.html a few months ago. It has a lot of benefits and with its help I can bypass any restrictions. Very convy